Though the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology required the elementary and junior high schools in Japan to adopt the criterion-referenced assessment (CRA), many teachers could not completely take off the norm-referenced assessment (NRA). Not only the school teachers but also educators at colleges do not know what the criteria and rubrics as the heart of CRA approach are.This research aimed to clarify how to introduce them at Japanese schools, learning from the works of Project Zero (PZ), Work Sampling System (WSS), and Key School in the United States. As the result of that, I found the following findings.1) Student portfolios and teacher's observation assessment are needed in order to meet the requirements of CRA. Particularly, I believe that we learn a lot from the Development Guidelines of WSS and the developmental continuum of Key School.2) We should reflect the failures of the formative evaluation movement in 1970's. In developing a unit plan, the classro
… Moreom teacher had better take a look on the Criteria of the National Institute for Educational Policy Research.3) It is true that the students could internalize the criteria by reflecting both the strengths and weaknesses of their works at classroom practices. However, the teacher should complement the students' assessment with his or her observational on-going assessment.4) The excellent works that students produced are quite effective to use as a future learning model and to link assessment to both learning and instruction. I edited the Work Sample Collections that the teachers in Fukui picked up the best and worst works at a particular unit.5) At the in-service training to deeply understand the criteria and rubrics, visual and active learning such as observing the videotapes, attending a workshop, and so forth, are much more effective and efficient than hearing the lectures.The report and videotapes that Describe the above findings are produced. I suppose that the tasks we have to study are developing the general and analytic rubrics and adopting teacher's observation assessment. Less